


An Echo That Knows You

by Shriek



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Weddings, wish spell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 15:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20449613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shriek/pseuds/Shriek
Summary: When Scanlan's Wish brings Vax back to them, just for Vex and Percy's wedding, Keyleth can't help but be unnerved by how unusual he's acting. But maybe it's a blessing in disguise.





	An Echo That Knows You

**Author's Note:**

> I have serious mixed feelings about the Weird that Vax was bringing in that scene, so this is me exploring that through my dearest Keyleth, who must have been feeling some type of way during all of this.

He’s different. It crawls up her spine with every word as she stands silently to the side, feeling smaller than she has since she was a naive young girl who’d never left home before. This isn’t her moment, and she knows that. It’s Vex and Percy’s wedding. Vex’s brother --or at least some strange, overly-formal approximation of him. So she makes herself small, and cries soundlessly as the love of her life speaks stilted reassurances to his twin.

With the weirdness, and the vaguely ominous almost-threat to Scanlan, she’d almost expected something else, when the creepy mask came off. A skeleton, a withered husk. But it was him. And maybe that’s worse. Because it’s _him_, with his face and his smile and even a hint of his former mannerisms. But the rest is all wrong. 

Vex is practically frantic with it, and Keyleth can’t blame her. Is this just what death does? Or is it a side effect of being under _her _control, like the strange growths coming out of his shoulder? Will this continue? How long until there’s nothing left of the real Vax? Until he’s just another unknowable figure in a stuffy legend. Vax’ildan the Fate Touched, Champion of the Raven Queen. Not the kind of person you can imagine having special nicknames for all of his friends, or pulling pranks on someone he knows can flatten him like a pancake. Not the kind of person you can imagine being a person at all.

When Vex turns him towards her, giving Keyleth permission to make this moment about herself, she almost doesn’t want it. She wants to run and hide, to scream at him not to speak to her unless it actually sounds like his own words coming out of his mouth. And then he fucking _bows _to her, and it’s so weird and wrong that it comes back around to being okay again.

So it’s not him. It’s a being that looks like him and has his memories and maybe even his love for them, but it’s not him. Not really. But maybe that’s better. She’d barely survived watching him walk away from them the first time. There’s no way she’d be able to do it again. But whatever Scanlan managed to bring forth from the afterlife to speak to them is barely a shadow of Vax as she knew him, so it’s okay --to make weak jokes, to tell this Vax ghost there’s nothing to forgive. It’s okay to tell him the things he needs to hear, until her brief moment is over.

It does hurt, to watch him scatter into black feathers once more, but it’s a manageable kind of hurt. Like the last few aching steps before collapsing into bed after a hard battle. Knowing you’ll still be sore in the morning, and that you’ll probably always have a scar, maybe a twinge or two on cold mornings, but the sword in your gut is no longer there. The wound is scabbed over and you can live with this pain. You can live with what comes after.

As Keyleth watches her friends kiss, sending lightning bugs scattering out into the night air, she prepares herself to live.


End file.
